Extracting Information from an Urban Network by Combining a Visibility Index and a City Data Set

Abstract

Cities can be represented by spatial networks, and the mathematical structure that defines a spatial network is a graph. Taking into account this premise, this paper is focused on analysing information on an urban scale by combining a new ray-casting visibility index with a data set of the urban street network. The visibility index provides information about the most visible buildings or areas. We relate this index with other data extracted from the city, with the aim of generating and analysing information about urban elements. To corroborate this idea, real data are analysed. The dataset is related to the heritage conservation of the buildings of the Villaflora suburb, located in the city of Quito (Ecuador). This information is processed, together with the visibility index, with the aim of determining the conservation degree of the urban areas most visually exposed to pedestrians or visitors. The combination of both values—heritage conservation and visibility index—is carried out by means of two new indices, I P and I N , which are defined using two-variable exponential functions.